Breathe
by Feral Phoenix
Summary: [AU] The threat of nightmares about your ex's tragic death makes insomnia understandable. However, it is not an excuse for destroying the kitchen at two in the morning. Too bad for Senel that even Shirley's patience wears a little thin at this hour.


Breathe

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Tales of Legendia and I REALLY wish it would stop INVADING MY BRAIN when I'm trying to work on GIFT ONESHOTS like I'm SUPPOSED to. Argh. Because it won't: Here, FF-Net, have a Senel/Shirley oneshot instead.

It was the sound of the cabinet doors banging and the clank of pot on cooking range that did it. Only after the noise had dragged Shirley out of her night's sleep did she start to wonder why the lamp on the bedside table was on, why her back was cold, why the door to the bedroom was open, and why the _hall _light was on, too.

After the middle-of-the-night fuzz started to clear, Shirley sat up, rubbed her eyes, and blinked sleepily at the other side of the bed. The covers had been turned down—thrown back, more like—roughly, leaving her exposed to open air, and the sheets and the pillow on the other side were badly rumpled. On the bedside table next to the aforementioned pillow, the lamp was glowing brightly, its pull cord still swinging.

Through more not-quite-cohesive blinking, Shirley looked blankly at the door. There was another slam, and more clanking, followed by the muffled sound of a frustrated masculine voice. Shirley couldn't hear words, but she could tell by the tone that he was swearing.

With a stiff grimace, Shirley turned back to her own bedside table and turned the digital alarm clock. She had the dimmer on so that the bright red numbers wouldn't keep her up at night, but she could still clearly read its cheerful display of "2:15".

Well, damn.

Putting the clock down, Shirley reluctantly slid out of her own covers, making a face as she pulled her pale pink sleepshirt down over her hips, stepped into fluffy slippers, and slipped on a headband so her hair wouldn't flop into her face too badly. Giving the bed a look of longing, she managed to shuffle out the door.

There had to be _some _reason Senel was downstairs making this kind of racket in the middle of the night.

Once Shirley had managed to get down the stairs and into the kitchen, she rubbed her eyes again, blinked some more, and watched Senel pacing back and forth from one countertop to the other, occasionally stopping to rifle through a cabinet and swearing like… well, like a sailor as he never seemed to find what it was he wanted. The teapot had been moved to the front of the range, and a little circle of fire bloomed happily beneath it.

He'd pulled on the same old pair of jeans he'd been wearing earlier today—well, yesterday, really; he was barefoot, and wasn't wearing a shirt. On both his hands, his knuckles were covered in an unruly tangle of band-aids, reminders of his violent attempts to physically deal with the problems neither one of them had wanted to face. From the looks of things, he hadn't noticed her yet.

Shirley crossed her arms and made a face, blinking into the fluorescent overhead light. "Senel, what are you doing?" she asked sleepily, trying not to sound too whiny or pathetic.

He turned to her with surprise on his face, then turned away. "Making tea. I couldn't sleep anyway."

Shirley raised her eyebrows at him, covered a yawn, then crossed the linoleum to stand behind him, watching him expectantly.

"I didn't mean to wake you up. Go back to bed, Shirley."

Shirley just looked at him, then lightly placed one small hand on his shoulder. Under the bright light, the contrast of her pale fingers against his mariner's tan was unusually stark. "…I won't just let you keep what's bothering you inside, you know," she informed him a little matter-of-factly. Senel made as if to shrug her off, then sighed as she leaned into his back. "Tell me what's wrong."

"I can't sleep."

"But you're tired." It wasn't a question. She'd seen the dark slashes under his eyes, whether or not he wanted to pretend they weren't there. "What is it?"

Senel didn't answer right away; instead, he walked away from her, heading around the counter towards the table, where he slumped into one of the chairs and put his face in his hands.

Pausing for a moment to blink more sleep away, Shirley followed him slowly, sinking into the chair next to him as she waited.

"Every time I close my eyes—I see her there," Senel confessed at length. "Lying at the side of the road again, all bloody, and I can't—"

Even as the now-familiar pain wrenched at her chest, making her eyes sting, one tiny corner of Shirley's mind—the brutally honest kind in the back that people usually did their best to suppress—let out a silent scream of frustration. _When are you ever going to let him _go, _Stella?! All you're doing is hurting him, the same as always! He's not yours anymore, you gave him up of your own free will a long time ago! Let him be!_

Pushing those thoughts firmly away, Shirley put an arm across Senel's shoulders. Tension and sleeplessness were making him shake slightly, she noted. Or was it just the horror of the memory, jagged around the edges and always floating dangerously close to the surface of both their minds?

She hesitated for a moment, knowing the reaction she would likely receive, but because she _knew _Senel couldn't go on like this, she reached out to the middle of the table, gently pushing the clear orange bottle towards him with the tips of her first two fingers.

As Shirley watched him critically, Senel cast a baleful eye on it from between his fingers, then reached out with one hand and knocked it away. The bottle fell over, rolling back and forth until the ribbed white cap caught on one of the placemats, its contents rattling.

Shirley sighed, resisting the temptation to groan openly. "You need sleep," she chided gently. "These will put you out for eight hours, and you won't dream. You can't afford _not _to take them, Senel, and you know it."

"Drugs are for weak people," he replied in a scathing tone blunted by insomnia, glaring at the pills.

Shirley just _looked _at him.

"Don't give me that face. I'm not taking anything."

She should talk to him, make him understand gently why he couldn't keep doing this to himself, that torturing himself with memories of Stella's awful death wouldn't help him move on or bring her back. Unfortunately, it was two in the morning. Shirley could Fix Things anytime, so long as she wasn't sleep-deprived. She knew that if she tried to get through to Senel now, she would probably end up yelling at him, and he wasn't like Jay or Moses or Will—being brutally blunt and to-the-point, especially at the top of her lungs, would only hurt him. So much for her reputation as Shirley Solver-Of-All-Emotional-Problems Fennes.

Fortunately, Shirley was also a _lot _better at swallowing her pride than Senel—even at insane times of the middle of the night. Or morning. Or whatever it was. She sat back, yawned, then stood up and retrieved the phone, beginning to dial.

Senel turned around and arched a weary brow at her. "What are you doing?"

"Calling Chloe," Shirley replied.

"…" Senel gave her a flat glare. "…and you're dragging our best friend into this _why _now?"

"Someone needs to talk sense into you, and you're not listening to me," Shirley told him, pausing with her thumb on the Talk button. "If I call Will, he'll just lecture you, and probably hit you to top it off. Norma would try to help, but at this hour she'd probably make things worse. Moses _does _try, but he's never really good at tact, especially at this hour. Jay would just yell at us for waking him up. I _would _call Grune, but if straight sympathy would work now, I wouldn't have to call anyone." She yawned again, covering it belatedly, then pressed the button and raised the phone to her ear.

Chloe picked up on the fourth ring, although there was only a groan on her end to let Shirley know that she was on at all.

"Chloe?"

Another groan from Chloe. "This had better be _so _good, Shirley," she said warningly.

"I'm really sorry," Shirley replied, making a face. "But I need some help over here."

There was a pause in which Shirley thought she heard the rustle of sheets, then a yawn. "'M there in fifteen minutes," Chloe said sleepily. "I'll try not to hit anyone on the way over."

"Drive safely," Shirley told her with a smile. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"…ngeh." Chloe hung up.

When Shirley put the phone back and turned around, Senel was giving her a look she supposed was meant to be an angry glower. Lack of sleep greatly blunted its impact, however, and so Shirley just walked back to him and hugged him loosely across the back of the chair.

"Hurting yourself over this doesn't do anything but hurt me," she told him quietly.

"…………"

"Just think about it," Shirley suggested, leaning her cheek into his soft white hair. "Just think about it, and breathe. I'll take care of the tea. You need to rest."

As she let him go and headed back into the kitchen, she heard Senel's sigh and the soft slump as he leaned forward into the table.

**Owari.**


End file.
